


Hast Thou Found Honey?

by zombified_queer



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dante's Inferno inspired, Domestic Disputes, Implied Sexual Content, Infidelity, M/M, Making Up, Post-Canon Cardassia, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombified_queer/pseuds/zombified_queer
Summary: It is the dissolution of everything Julian and Garak have built together. Garak's dreams are only the start of the end. Perhaps.





	Hast Thou Found Honey?

He knows about Hebetian ghosts, these face-takers. But Garak didn't think they were capable of mimicking anything that wasn't another Cardassian. And yet, here Julian was, dressed in blue silk with his cold weight on Garak's body. The ghost straddled Garak, who noted the ancient architecture, the open and air structure of a temple. A proper temple too.

The ghost kissed him, frost laced in lip prints, but the shock wasn't enough to wake Garak from the nightmare.

Someone, far off in the dream, Oralian gongs reverberated, the sound folded in on itself to slip under Garak's scales. He could taste the incense, thick and cloying but safe and familiar from three hundred years ago.

And he tasted Julian as the ghost kissed him again, the frost spiked with Terran cane sugar. Indulgence. 

Garak woke with a start, cold but on the pallet bed he shared with Julian. The Terran was oblivious, mumbled something in his sleep. Garak turned over and buried his face in Julian's throat and inhaled deeply. 

Julian smelled of warm sand cooled by night and freshly laundered linens and the essence of restful sleep. Faintly, Garak could taste incense in the air.

* * *

The coffee rations had been cut back again, which left Julian and Garak sipping warm, gritty water that resembled the phantom of coffee. 

Julian looked tired, with deep, bruise-dark shadows under his eyes. The standard relief jumpsuits left the doctor shapeless and sexless, so different from the vibrant thing in Garak's dreams. 

It was a sin to long for Terok Nor, the sheltered and gilded cage, but at least Julian had been alive on the station.

Garak considered taking in the waist of Julian's jumpsuits, considered giving him some form. But Julian needed his clothes and having a figure in standard-issue scrubs wouldn't make him cure diseases any faster or amputate necrotic limbs any better.

"Indulgence."

"What?" Julian set his mug down on the tiny kitchen table, the wood scarred and charred, marked as salvage. 

"Nothing," Garak answered. He drained his mug and tried not the chew the coffee grit at the bottom of the mug. "When did we last have sex, Julian?"

Julian laughed mirthlessly and stared down at his own mug of coffee. "When I got the clinic job. We celebrated."

"Let's do it."

"I'll be late for work."

"Fuck work," Garak shouted, feeling high and hysterical. "Go in late."

"Garak." Julian pushed his mug back. Meal finished. A hint of anger in the Terran's voice. "We're short-staffed as it is."

"Fine." Garak reached over and took Julian's mug. "Fine." 

"Just because you don't work doesn't mean the rest of us can fuck off!"

"I said fine!" Garak drained the lukewarm mug and chewed the grit. "Fine! Got to work! They need you more than me, anyway."

Garak slammed the empty mug down, a sliver of porcelain chipping off at the bottom. He stormed off, stormed out of the tiny shack he shared with Julian.

* * *

Garak had a weak spot for pretty whores with hazel eyes, so he found one in the bombed out husk of Lakarian. All it'd cost to fuck the handsome Cardassian was a bit of booze and a promise not to break the skin.

Booze and sex went a long way in the ruins.

Garak let the younger man lead him into a sparse room with a tattered blanket for a door and greasy rags on the floor for a bed. A tarnished Obsidian Order emblem hung crooked on the wall and his companion didn't seem to recognize it in the slightest.

"Do you have any incense?" Garak felt foolish for even asking. 

"No insects here." The younger Cardassian pinned Garak up against the wall. To tease, the younger man stripped with a brutal efficiency. "Not in this building, anyway. Shame. Good protein."

"Do you know where there's a temple?" 

"Do I look like a priest?" He sunk to his knees and fumbled with Garak's trousers. "You paid for sex, so let's do it."

Garak barked a short laugh, but he let the younger man get to work, the cool tongue a relief.

* * *

He stumbled for a while around the ruins, as if half-drunk. There were others that crept in the dust, some stumbled with honest stupor. But Garak went unnoticed by them, the scavengers. He was too lean to be meat and not dead. Even in their desperation, these gaunt figures couldn't stoop that low. And he had come only with that bit of drink he'd given to the prostitute. He was worthless and they all knew it.

He wondered, paused for a lazy moment in the sun, if there were sand mites on them. Or fleas hidden in their sandblasted rags.

He closed his eyes and breathed deep the dust and sand and heat. It was going to give him lung problems, the wet and sickly rattle-cough of the dying. All the rubble did. But Julian learned all those fantastic herbalism cures from Kelas. So there was no need to worry. Nothing needed to be worried about ever, in Garak’s mind. 

Nothing but the warmth of the sun.

It was warm, so nice and soothed all the aches from his joints. Garak refused to leave his sunny little spot. He stood there, in one place, in ecstacy, for hours until the sun set halfway down the horizon and all the glass and concrete began to cool.

There rustled the breeze and every scavenger scattered, hidden in crevices.

Wind picked up, buffeted his scales with an added chill and sand. At first, it was a minor annoyance, the wind, but the gusts picked up. It whipped the ruins into a sandstorm, the sand a sting that refused to die down. Garak found rubble to crouch in, but felt the primal urge to sink his claws into the stone, to grasp anything. 

It was inadequate shelter, the rubble, and the sand continued to find his eyes, his nose, his mouth. And he cursed, silently, while he wept without meaning to, the lack of those primitive adaptations, the inner eyelids and more protective scaling. 

So he crouched in the dark rubble, eyes closed and felt like he was going to die. Every shift of the stones set his pulse at a new pace. 

But it died down slowly and left the rubble quiet as the grave. And then he unstuck himself from the rubble he'd clung to and stumbled down the road toward home.

* * *

As he walked home, it began to pour. Garak pulled his relief-issue clothes closer around him and hoped to keep some of the warmth from basking. 

It was hard enough when the sand was dry and shifting. And the sandstorms made traveling on foot dangerous. Rain just complicated the travel more.

The rain was foul, slightly acidic, and turned the sand to an unsteady slush under Garak's feet. It reeked of pollution and decay and Garak tried everything not to breathe it in, but the rain seemed intent on drowning Garak completely. 

A drop slid down the back of his neck. It hissed on his scales. The mud sucked at his ankles and Garak wondered if it might be more fitting to swim home.

And he could see nothing in the dark of the night and through the rain.

He thought about the corpses buried shallowly along the roads, the mass graves full of limbs. And he was so spoiled to only have to live through famine and plague like the dark ages of Cardassia. 

With every difficult step, Garak imagined it wasn't mud holding him in the vice grip, but corpses. All of them cried for Garak to sink to their level. They cried for him to drown in the sludge. 

Something brushed past his ankle and Garak howled, mouth opened to let the rain in.

* * *

He came to warm and swaddled in thin sheets, though loosely enough not to irritate his claustrophobia. No rain, no mud. Garak knew he'd been bathed recently. He looked around slowly and found himself home. No Julian, but home nonetheless.

He resigned himself to sleep when he felt cool hands on his throat to check his pulse. Garak opened his eyes to Julian, bent at the waist and looking five years older than he did this morning.

Home. Truly home. 

"Julian."

"Don't say a fucking thing."

Garak's heart leapt. He thought, for a terrible and tragic moment, Julian knew about the prostitute.

"You're still warming. Save your strength," Julian added, the words barbed. 

Garak sighed. Just to make sure, he tasted the air. Fatigue, warm sand cooling, freshly laundered linen. No incense or frost, no sandstorms or acid rain. 

Julian removed his hand from Garak's throat and stroked Garak's hair instead. 

"You were facedown in the rain," Julian murmured, his voice less sharp. "I thought you died."

"I'm not done yet," Garak murmured leaning into the affection. "Not ever."

"Arrogant." 

Garak's tongue felt too heavy to move anymore, so he sunk into the dark sleep of the near-dead.

* * *

It was little more than broth, the coffee, and the grit sank to the bottom of the mug. Yet Garak sipped it, slowly and with Julian's hand on his back. The Terran rubbed small circles, which greatly improved the circulation and Garak could hardly stop the deep, content rumble in his chest. 

"What were you doing in the rain, you awful gecko?" Julian teased. His lips looked golden in the early morning light. 

"I don't know if the truth is something you'd like," Garak admitted. To prevent Julian from asking further, Garak sipped his coffee and kept the rim of the mug pressed against his mouth.

But Julian persisted with a chaste kiss along the jaw, the careful scratches along Garak's back. "Tell me?"

Garak lowered the mug. "I went to the ruins to fuck a prostitute."

"Garak..."

"I told you." Garak finished the rest of his coffee, chewed the grit pensively. 

Julian pulled away, quiet as a phantom. The Terran wrapped his arms around himself. 

"I'll see myself out."

"I took today off, Garak."

"You're a fool, then." 

Julian glared, his eyes dark pools of disappointment. "There's no pleasing you."

"I suppose not." 

Julian took Garak's empty mug. For the briefest moment when their fingers touched, there was some spark. But then Julian went to the kitchen and it ebbed away slowly.

* * *

Garak knew it was a dream, but he tried to rationalize the red waves of the wide river as sand. It made sense it would be sand that dyed the water red.

But the people who fought on the river's surface made Garak think blood. 

And the fighting was vicious, all teeth and claws as if these were not civilized Cardassians but primal beasts. They tore at one another and shrieked. Perhaps it was for air or perhaps it was purely out of spite. And for every injury inflicted, it mended just as fast as it was inflicted to leave everyone continuously violent and hateful. 

Garak was grateful to be on the shore, even if the water sucked at his ankles with the intent to drag him in. He was away from the combat in the water. For now. But how easily tides could change, how easily Garak could find himself waist-deep in roiling blood.

He preferred his phantom with the ice-heavy kisses, the taste of incense, the open air of the temples.

* * *

He woke with a start from dreams of sandy maelstroms and stinking quagmires. Garak tasted nothing out of sorts, aside from, perhaps, the proximity of Julian's' body to his own. He was closer tonight, Julian.

It thrilled Garak. 

He wondered for ages how long it had been when they could lie together. They seemed to always to fight against one another for space, to try and flee each other in their sleep.

Garak wondered what Julian dreamed of or if he even dreamed at all.

And then he became aware there was whispering at his throat, the breath warm and alive.

"I really did worry about you, Garak, you fool." Julian's hand slid over Garak's back. "I wonder what I'd do if I lost you. Maybe bury myself in work."

Garak blinked in the dark. He made no attempt to roll over. If he did, he'd spoil it. He knew it was true.

"I love you, you bitter old lizard."

The lips against Garak's nape were warm, the sort of warmth that washed over Garak in a tide, leaving him feeling relaxed and safe.

And he knew he was home.


End file.
